It took awhile to find it, but the Fishing Alberta crew finally pulls into the boat launch at Jensen Reservoir. Oddly, (and with much frustration) there were no signs on the main roads pointing to this Provincial Recreation Area. Fortunately the crew met a couple of local anglers while stopping to film some beauty shots. These fans of Fishing Alberta had a cell phone and managed to guide us through the gravel roads to find Jensen. Who the heck is in charge of highway road signs anyways?

Don’t blink or you’ll miss the one and only sign leading into Jensen Reservoir. Check the top of this page for accurate directions (we wrote them down) into Jensen.

Eager with anticipation Scott Rawlings grabs a rod and gets ready to gear up for a great day of fishing on Jensen Reservoir. Spacious rod lockers are just one of the fabulous features on the 2002 Lund Fisherman.

Scott takes a look through the Aqua-Vu underwater camera to see if he can spot any fish while Alex keeps a steady eye on the sonar. The boys had heard (from several people) that there was excellent walleye fishing to be had on Jensen Reservoir. Now if we can only find them!

Scott shows off a brand new style of blade that is being manufactured by Hagen’s out of the USA. Shaped like an old Gibson Flying V guitar this brightly colored blade proved to be quite successful for walleye on a number of Alberta lakes this summer. Sorry, these units are not available yet in Canada.

Alex points out some likely looking structure dead ahead. With no guide, and only a few tips to go on you have to pay close attention to shoreline structure in order to find the most likely hot-spots for walleyes

Alex lands a baby pike that decided to snack on his spinner rig and minnow. This little guy was the first fish of the day and not much bigger than the Walleye Master minnows the boys were using.

Scott starts to get excited as the boys troll around a mid-lake island on Jensen. This looked like the perfect place for Mr. Walleye to be hanging out. There was an abrupt transition from sand to weeds, a good steep drop-off, lots of forage fish swimming about, but alas……..no walleye.

On just about every Alberta reservoir we’ve fished the spillway has been a huge fish magnet. Flowing water, lots of edibles floating around, good structure, and a steep drop off right at the mouth. Two hours fishing produced the pike (minnows) you see below.

Sometimes you find em’ and sometimes you don’t, and that’s why they call it fishing (not catching). After a full day on Jensen the boys were only able to catch a few measly pike. After hearing so much about Jensen Scott and Alex were disappointed, and to be quite honest, rather humbled. They worked the lake, found the structure, followed the advice of local anglers, tried all the old tricks (and a few new ones) but the walleye just weren’t biting, even the big pike were lip-locked. It just drove home the point that even with a huge boat, all the tackle you could ever want, nice rods and reels, sonar, underwater cameras and a combined 30 years of experience, sometime it just ain’t in the cards. Maybe we should have tried pickerel rigs from shore……..

Jensen is a gorgeous reservoir and we’d love to hear from anyone who has had success there. Drop us an email, or better yet, send us a picture of your best catch on Jensen, we’d love to see what we were missing!

You can reach us at fishingalberta@shaw.ca